Happy and You Know It

by Laura Hankin

That was one of the strangest things about motherhood. You could love your baby to pieces, be thankful every day for his ten tiny toes and his piercing wail and his all-consuming existence, and yet still mourn the life you’d had before. And somehow it wasn’t cool to say that, to treat the birth of a baby as the death of something else. You had to be all joy, all gratitude.

Women had to grapple with a choice that men never did while remaining uncomplaining and generous so that they didn’t nag their husbands straight into the arms of less complicated lovers.